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In today’s turbulent media landscape, The Washington Post Company is always looking for new growth areas. With declining revenue at the flagship newspaper dragging down the company’s earnings, and with Kaplan under the grip of tighter regulations over for-profit education, the Post Company is willing to try a lot.

The Washington Post’s website now features such things as sponsored content and a metered paywall, and the company is even branching out into a wine club.

And now the Post’s parent company is trying another venture: heavy industrial equipment.

The Post Company announced today that it will acquire Forney Corporation, a global supplier of products and systems for industrial boilers. Forney, based in Carrollton, Texas, is currently owned by United Technologies Corp. Its product lines include igniters, flame detectors, duct burners, and burner management systems. It also offers custom-built coal monitoring systems.

“Our acquisition of Forney Corporation is part of the Post Company’s ongoing strategy of investing in companies with demonstrated earnings potential and strong management teams attracted to our long-term investment horizon,” Post Company chairman Don Graham says in a press release announcing the deal. “Forney is a small acquisition that fits with our decentralized operating philosophy.”

As The Wall Street Journal notes, previous acquisitions by the Post have included Celtic Healthcare Inc., a hospice provider in Pennsylvania and Maryland. But now, when you think of The Washington Post, you can think of the devices that fire up large industrial power generators.

As for DCist, if there’s an industrial product that describes this website, it’s probably these modular chilling systems made by Markham, Ontario-based Tandem Chillers Inc.